All Rise season 2, episode 9: Where's your head at?

This week’s All Rise is all about getting into people’s heads—legally, as Emily Lopez (Jessica Camacho) represents a defendant whose sanity is questioned, and in the metaphorical sense while Mark Callan (Wilson Bethel) experiences blowback from his past actions.

“Safe to Rise” centers on a young man who stabbed his father, and the two legal teams arguing over whether or not he was mentally ill or just high on drugs. The difference is huge: one will send Alfredo Castro (guest star Andrew Matarazzo) to a mental hospital, the other means that he ends up in prison.

The situation gets even more complicated when Alfredo’s father Javier begrudgingly reveals to Emily, far too late, that there’s a family history of schizophrenia. So what’s the right choice not just for the justice system, but for Alfredo’s future?

All Rise season 2, episode 9

“Safe to Fall” puts Emily in a tough position, especially at the end of the third act when Alfredo has an episode that gives her first-hand experience with his illness.

But prosecutor Kiara Foster (that’s Major Crimes alum Kearran Giovanni) is unsympathetic, and Emily has to convince Javier (guest star Juan Carlos Cantu) to come out with his family story—something still incredibly painful—if she has any hope of keeping her client out of prison. It’s a situation where no one really wins, and again, showcases an element of the judicial process that TV crime drama viewers probably don’t think a lot about.

There’s a tough scene where Alfredo’s sister Eva (Daniela Nievas) confronts her father for not telling her about her grandmother’s illness, because she was left thinking her brother was a drug addict and pushed for a prison sentence accordingly. All Rise prompts viewers to wonder how different that relationship, and even this case, could have been.

On the flip side it’s a breath of fresh air to see a civil dynamic between prosecutors and public defenders even when they disagree. That’s so much better than the usual West Side Story-type depictions in the genre and it’s another reason that All Rise continues to stand out.

In the subplot, Mark finds out that his prosecution of Deputy Peter Rashel earlier this season will continue to haunt him. He’s now publicly seen as “anti-police” and his attempt to bring on DDA Tony Carver to do damage control (recurring guest star Steven Williams, who will still be X from The X-Files to many of us) is met with swift backlash from the boss until the full story comes out: the judge Carver had a public outburst against was Choi’s (Reggie Lee) mentor.

It’s interesting to see All Rise playing with the aftereffects of the Rashel case on Mark’s career, since so many other shows would have dropped that when they wrapped up the story. Yet especially since it felt like there was so much more to go into with the police misconduct element, that makes it even more intriguing to see that this isn’t quite dead. Let’s see if that continues in future episodes.

Big mistake, though: Rachel (Ryan Michelle Bathe) kissing Mark. It’s a bit of a cliche for shows to push love triangles, and All Rise doesn’t need it. Luckily Mark and Amy (Lindsey Gort) said that they loved each other at the end of the episode, so it seems like that’s going to be the end of this issue, but the episode would have been just fine without it.

Plus, the would-be relationship between Luke Watkins (J. Alex Brinson) and Samantha Powell (Audrey Corsa) turns out to be really short-lived. There are a lot of personal developments in “Safe to Fall,” but they supplement the story and don’t overshadow it. TV deserves a good legal drama where the characters can coexist with serious storytelling, and All Rise has so far been that series in almost every way.

Next. More All Rise with Lindsey Gort. dark

All Rise airs Mondays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. New episodes return on Monday, March 15.

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All Rise season 2, episode 9: Where’s your head at?

By Brittany Frederick | Feb 23, 2021

All Rise season 2, episode 9